No, The Weeknd Is Not Retiring

Carl Williott | July 5, 2016 11:32 am

There’s panic plaguing some fans of The Weeknd who think the singer is going full Jim Brown and retiring in his prime. Search “weeknd retire” and you’ll see tweets and various posts expressing incredulity/confusion both over the fact that The Weeknd is allegedly retiring, and that it’s because he *lost his microphone*.

If this seems silly, it is. It all stems from a recent ClickHole article headlined “A Career Cut Short: The Weeknd Is Retiring From Music After Losing His Microphone,” which included a mocked up Facebook post from the singer. The key information is that ClickHole is The Onion’s BuzzFeed parody site, and their main thing is to pass off deeply absurd headlines as true — which actually makes it really hard to distinguish from regular internet nonsense.

So, as these things do, it spread online stripped of its original context. Soon enough, Weeknd fans were in mourning. But it’s fake, you guys! He’s not retiring. And don’t feel bad if you were duped; you’re not the first to fall for ClickHole’s fake headlines. Earlier this year, St. Vincent called out the site before learning what was going on.

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